At a Window

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A Raindrop In Mid-Fall Is A Split-Second Shot

 A  P  R  I  L    R  A  I  N    S  O  N  G

Let the rain kiss you

Let the rain beat upon your head

With silver liquid drops

Let the rain sing you a lullaby

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk

The rain makes running pools in the gutter

The rain plays a little sleep song

On our roof at night

And I love the rain.

--- Langston Hughes

Jack Frost Paints the World With Diamond Dust

Jack Frost can jazz up any landscape; he's always been one of my favorite artists. He works odd hours, however, so you have to get up real early to catch his stunning transformations of  mundane winter landscapes into sparkling crystal kingdoms.

Jack always takes summers off. When he returns in the fall, his arrival is the clarion call that signals the end of warm weather for that year. He cares nothing about growers. If late, he will cruelly ruin a vintner's entire grape crop; if early, he'll quietly devastate every tomato patch for miles.

No, Jack cares not for dull, trifling agrarian duties, for his true calling is that of a great artist. It's up to him to bedazzle the heck out of an otherwise bland cold-weather morning. With quick flicks of his wrist, Jack can fling bling all over Mother Nature like no body's business. Fresh snowfall can't even hold a candle to the beauty of Jack's blasts of sparkles, especially when he's in the zone.

Early in the fall Jack may dust your pumpkin patch out of a sense of duty, as if the bright yellow-orange globes would keep growing forever without his kiss-of-death touch.

Jack's artwork always vanishes in the morning sun but like a sculptor of sandcastles, he loves the doing of the thing more than the finished work.

Jack's is a reckless and romantic form of art. But for anyone who has ever stopped in the delicate glow of morning's first light to look closely at his use of diamond dust on a spiderweb in a barb-wire fence, it is pure magic.

A Widow's Collection of Inspirational Scenes

These are all photos I've taken since my husband died in 2009. I know that he is always with me, but I feel closest to him when I am outdoors in the Cathedral of Nature. Many places claim to be "God's Country:" here are a few I've found in Idaho, Utah, Oregon and Montana. Sometimes, it's in my own back yard, if I look close enough.